The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
by lilysxx
Summary: All Albus ever wanted to do was regret it. It wasn't hard to regret his actions on that night which lead to the death of his sister, or his views of muggles or his insatiable curiosity about the Hallows. But he couldn't regret loving Gellert Grindelwald, nor would he ever shake the sneaking suspicion that his heart still beat for the blonde haired boy. Grindeldore, T for innuendo
1. We Meet

Albus wished for only one thing, one thing every night upon some distant and unreliable star. He wished he could regret it. He didn't wish for it to be erased from history or his memory, he didn't wish for it to have ended better, he wished only that now he could regret his actions which led to it. But it didn't matter how hard he tried, he couldn't.

No matter how hard he wished, Albus could not regret Gellert Grindelwald.

Furthermore he missed him. He often found himself hearing snippets of words which sounded like his name, a person using the same intonation he would have, saying something he would have agreed with, and once again Albus would be in his arms under a midsummer's sky in Godric's hollow.

He remembered how it started, how Albus had returned home from school with a sigh that afternoon, throwing his trunk regretfully into his room and wishing he didn't have to leave, that he could stay in Hogwarts and be the celebrated student, the genius, surrounded by other geniuses rather than having to put up with the mediocrities of his family. They were only three now, from five they had been broken. His good-for-nothing father had wasted in Azkaban, his mother was dead.

The remaining two were unexceptional, Aberforth- with whom Albus' relationship was precarious- and Ariana, who loved Aberforth more. Albus did not belong here, with the two of them. They deserved each other, Aberforth cared for Ariana and neither of them cared for their elder, whilst Albus was supposed to be doing his tour now with Elphias, exploring the world, sharing his talent! Instead, he was here in Godric's Hollow, taking care of a family which had never had need of him and still didn't.

He couldn't stay in his room any longer, not with all the reminders of the life he was supposed to be living right now. Casting a charm upon his things so that they may unpack themselves, he ducked out in search of escape.

He paused outside his mother's room for a moment, allowing a wave of remorse to crash over him. However begrudging he had felt about his return, it didn't mean he didn't miss her any less. She was not a perfect woman, in fact Albus had probably spent too much time magnifying her imperfections, but she had been his mother, the woman who raised him and kissed him better when he hurt himself and tucked him in when he thought he saw a werewolf under his bed. The compassion he prised in himself was not of his own making, but rather a trait inherited from her. What would she think now, of his reluctance to share it with his siblings? They had lost her too, all of them were hurting.

He moved on from the bedroom. He couldn't dwell upon the thought of his mother, it only threatened to depress him, an ongoing threat already from his being torn away from the promise of strange new lands and their replacement of Godric's Hollow.

He passed through the kitchen, swiping a hand along the countertop. His mother would have been here usually, cooking. She liked to hum sometimes, when she cooked. It was one of the few things they were certain Ariana liked, when she hummed. She also liked when Albus played piano, but he hadn't done that in a long time.

He still couldn't stand to look at her. She had stopped eating since their mother died, she would only take small portions when it was necessary, and only when Aberforth gave them to her. She grew gaunt and pale, dark rings forming beneath her eyes. She was even more withdrawn, would stare into the distance for longer periods of time, wouldn't react to things they said and did like she used to. She wouldn't cry either, not like she did when their father was sentenced, not like when he died. Sometimes tears would slip down her face but they would go un-wiped, she only got angry when they tried.

But he couldn't look at her for another reason. _She _had killed their mother. Kendra's death had been the outcome of one of Ariana's episodes, which was why it was so unnerving when she showed no remorse, only a deep mourning.

Just when he was running out of rooms to explore without running into Ariana in the living room, the doorbell rang. Relieved, Albus had gone to answer it.

"Bathilda!" he exclaimed as he threw open the door, a wide smile on his face as he was graced with the presence of a small part of Hogwarts, his true home.

"Albus, it is good to see you looking well. Are you alright?" she extended her hand and clutched Albus' arm, a gesture which made it suddenly very hard not to cry. When affronted with the sorrow of others it suddenly becomes much harder to forget your own, a reason why Albus had found it much harder to restrain tears at the funeral than he had in the days leading up to it.

"I'm fine," he insisted, taking her hand gently from his shoulder. "Would you like to come in?"

"Oh no, only I heard you were back and I wanted to say hello, to make sure you were handling everything alright?"

"Aberforth is handling everything," Albus confessed breathlessly, "he knows how to deal with Ariana far better then I do, and he's been sorting out all of mother's affairs. I must admit I'm finding myself to be increasingly useless." He shrugged.

"You are far from useless, Albus. They need you now, your brother and sister, even if you don't think so." Albus knew she was wrong, that they never really needed him, but he didn't say anything, he only invited her in.

"Oh no, I can't," she replied, "I only stopped by to see if you were in. My nephew is staying with me for the summer, I'm on my way to meet him now."

"Your nephew?" Albus inquired, "The one who goes to Durmstrang?"

"_Went _to Durmstrang," she corrected, rolling her eyes. "He was expelled last year." Albus cocked an eyebrow. Bathilda having a miscreant as a relative? The thought was almost comical.

"I would like to meet him," he said with a smile and Bathilda chuckled and shook her head.

"I'm afraid he might be a bad influence on you, Albus, I would hate to see what he can do with power such as yours," Albus smiled. How was he to know then the truth in Bathilda's words? How was he to know the boy would leave him with a lasting scar someplace most people couldn't see? A gash on his heart defacing the quarters of his sister and his love? So he insisted that he meet him, tonight even, and Bathilda consented with the promise of a home cooked meal.

Albus hadn't been apprehensive when he had arrived. He had enjoyed plenty of meals with Bathilda, both in and out of Hogwarts. Despite their age gap the two were good friends and intellectual equals. As such they had always had something to talk about, the source of much jealousy within his History of Magic classes when the two would get on so well.

But when a young and undeniably handsome boy opened the door to her house, Albus' palms began to sweat.

"You must be Albus," he said with a smile Albus could only describe as sly. Wiping his hands against his cloak for a moment he took the boy's hand and entered the house, replying as he unwrapped his scarf from around his neck- there was no need for him to dress up warmly and walk when he could just apparate to such places, but doing so was a custom Albus couldn't shake. Even in July the nights were cold in Godric's hollow.

"Yes, that's me. You're Bathilda's nephew I take it?" He helped Albus out of his coat and hung it up on the hatstand Bathilda never used.

"Gellert," he replied as Albus turned to face him, looking somewhat more presentable then he had before. "Gellert Grindelwald. Aunt Bathilda is waiting in the dining room," he said nothing more as he led Albus into the room he had visited hundreds of times before, with a table set for three this time rather than two.

"Albus, you're here!" she exclaimed, flicking her wand and ordering the food onto the table as she rose from her seat to greet him, kissing him lightly on the cheek and offering him the seat beside her, Gellert took the one opposite and she sat back down at the head.

"So tell me your plans for the summer, Albus," she insisted as he helped himself to some of her chicken and roast potatoes, "are you doing anything exciting?"

A flash of resentment crossed past Albus' face, one that would usually have gone unnoticed but which he had a feeling Gellert had caught.

"I was going to do the world tour with Elphias," he explained miserably, "but after my mother... I'm needed here, so I'll be staying here for the summer."

"Well then you will be with me," Gellert said smoothly, "I'm here all summer also." Suddenly all the summer brightened with the prospect. A summer with a boy so handsome and mysterious as Gellert meant more excuses to avoid Aberforth and Ariana.

"Wonderful," Albus smiled. "then we must get to know each other better. Tell me about yourself, Gellert." Albus held an insatiable curiosity. There is something about the beautiful that he found so incredibly alluring, it was the beautiful he could not resist, wether it was the beauty of a theory when it clicked in his head, the beauty of a personality, of grotesque kindness or compassion, but rarely was it the physical beauty. In its purest form the allure of physical beauty had always been a mystery to Albus, one of those most infuriating for it affected him directly and he could not understand it. All he knew was that this boy _was _beautiful.

Gellert sensed his admiration, sucked it out of the air and seemed to swell with it, he began to describe himself, his views in a way that seemed enviably open and yet was guarded. Truths were given but only in mismatched halves, it was the sort of measured conversation when one leaves knowing very little more than one knew when they arrived.

But eased by the boy's apparent openness, Albus spilled forth all that he was. Upon the table he laid his life's goals and aims, each positive and negative attribute he had, where he got them from. Gellert picked them up like trinkets and played with them, toyed with them, dissected one before putting it back down to examine another. Albus felt almost proud in the interest Gellert took in him, he glowed with the praise and the criticism, both equal displays of enough regard to even study.

Bathilda watched unsure about her feelings. She knew full well her nephew was dangerous, but their relationship fascinated her. The two were strong characters of the dark and light. There was always the threat of her nephew's darkness which was why she considered terminating the friendship, but there was also the prospect of Albus' light. Maybe, if they grew close enough, Albus could save Gellert from the world of darkness which awaited him.

But Bathilda hadn't counted on love. She hadn't seen it in Albus' eyes as the glistened in the candlelight, enthralled by his every word. Love made Albus weak, made him more prone to the dark. Albus didn't need the light if he could have Gellert instead.


	2. We Kiss

After that night, Albus and Gellert spent every day together. They would spend hours apparating to woods and abandoned sea-sides, taking full advantage of their lack of a trace. They would send spell after spell at each other, creating new ones, improving old ones. It was the first time Albus began to think that Gellert really saw his genius, saw how he wielded a wand like a well practiced foil, each movement deft and significant, carefully measured to reach their maximum effect.

For once, Gellert felt equally matched.

In the meantime, home life grew even more tiresome for Albus. He didn't want to be at home with Aberforth and Ariana and his mother's empty bedroom, he wanted to be out, he wanted to be exploring with Gellert the intricacies of magic, its moods, its changes. He wanted to capture Gellert's every word, to string them onto a chain like popcorn on Christmas and hang them like tinsel over his heart.

So he began to invite Gellert over more often, spend dinners at his house with his monosyllabic family. The boy looked so regal against his modest settings. When he sat at their table it seemed to glow in Albus' eyes, lifted to some higher plane upon which Gellert lived, where Albus would have to strain his neck to see and squint against the light.

"I don't like him," Aberforth said after he left one night. Albus whipped around.

"What do you mean, you don't like him?" Albus asked, incredulously. How could anyone not like him? He was so effortlessly charming, enviably cool. He presented himself with an air of detachment which meant if he took an interest in you, you were special, and if he didn't you would simply have to spend your life trying to gain his interest.

"He gives me the creeps a little bit," Aberforth confessed, "And Ariana doesn't like him." Albus sighed. Of course it was Ariana, it was always and would always be Ariana. Aberforth donated so much of his life to that girl he was blind to the things around it, the beauty that radiated from the body of the boy Ariana disliked.

"Well she doesn't have to like him," Albus said stubbornly, eyeing his sister in the corner of the room, oblivious to their conversation or indeed that such things as conversation existed outside of the small world she had constructed for herself out of impenetrable steel and stone. She had begun to eat larger amounts but her eyes were still sunken, her face still pale. A girl once terribly pretty she now seemed more like a corpse.

Realising that his brother would never agree, Aberforth threw his hands in the air. "I don't like him Albus, but you aren't going to listen to me, so you do what you want like always and I'll stay here and look after Ariana, like always." The words were spat at Albus, a weapon rather than a statement. A reminder of the united front against him, a reminder that whilst his brother and sister had each other, he was alone.

But he didn't care, because he knew with absolute certainty that he wasn't alone. He had Gellert. He wasn't certain why he was so sure, but he felt the odd sense of invincibility one does crossing the street without looking, that what you've seen happen to others won't happen to you.

"They don't like me, do they?" Gellert asked the next day, as they sat somewhere in the New Forest beside a lake, levitating the leaves around them, watching as passing breezes fluttered them, watching as they shed their dew-drops, littering the ground with small gems which smashed upon impact.

"Of course they do," Albus replied weakly but he knew Gellert wasn't convinced. "No, they don't," he confirmed, "but I do."

"I know you do, Albus," he said with a self assured smile, the kind that made Albus' heart flutter with something he tried desperately to oppress. It was great admiration for a great mind, that's what he told himself repeatedly. He liked Gellert a lot, he was a good _friend. _So he ignored the flutter and the pulse which ran up to his throat when he didn't respond, he only furrowed his eyebrows.

"What's the smile about?"

"I was only wondering," he began, and then stopped short. Patiently, Albus waited for him to continue. He would have waited all his life. "If perhaps it may be that I can trust you now?" Albus was unsure of how to react short of jumping to his feet and yelling with triumph that of course he could be trusted, Gellert could trust him with his life! And then immediately afterward he hated himself for even thinking it, scolded himself in his head.

So he replied with less enthusiasm; "Trust me with what?" Gellert glanced about, as if looking for some lurking eavesdropper. "There's nobody here," Albus assured him, "We cast muggle detection charms and everything." Nodding, Gellert took a breath.

"Albus, do you know the tale of the three brothers?" he asked. Albus furrowed his eyebrows and nodded.

"The old fairytale with the brothers and the bridge? Yeah I know that one," he said, screwing up his face and trying to remember it exactly. He was sure he had his own copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard somewhere in his room still, the page with the three brother's tale was creased at the corner from years of dog-earing.

"Good," Gellert said with a conspiratorial smile, shuffling closer to Albus so the two sat cross legged facing each other, knees touching. "And do you remember what gifts Death gave the brothers?" Albus nodded slowly, watching as Gellert grabbed a stick which lay on the ground some distance away, poising it in the dirt between their legs.

"There was the wand made from the elder tree, the most powerful wand in the world," he began, watching as Gellert dragged a line through the soil, "and then the stone that would bring back your loved ones," around the base of the line Gellert drew a circle, "And finally..." Albus bit his lip, trying to remember Death's third gift. As a prompt, Gellert drew the final symbol, a triangle around the other two to form something which looked somewhat like an eye.

"The cloak of invisibility," he breathed, casting the stick away and stroking the ground and his creation. "These three together are called the Deathly Hallows, Albus, and they make one the master of death. They are real, Albus. That is why I'm here, I think I've found the trail." Albus' breath caught at the words and he looked up to lock with eyes almost as bright a blue as his own.

"Truly?" he asked in a whisper, leaning forward. Death was ever-present in his life. It had started when he was young, when his father would kill and later die, recently when his mother met an equal fate. All around him people sought to avoid it, even his friend Nicholas was intent on perfecting the art of Alchemy. He had laughed it off so many times, waved it away when it threatened to plague his thoughts, suppressed it because it was inevitable and therefore not worth his time thinking about it. It remained concealed somewhere deep within him, confined to the same holding cell as his feelings for Gellert.

But now here was this boy speaking of myths like they were true, of hallows. Here was this boy staring into his eyes with equal desire for what he felt so undeniably and what he told himself repeatedly could not be. As Gellert reached out a hand to touch Albus' face, he wondered if maybe it was time to unlock the cell door.

"What are y-" Albus' weak protestation was cut off by Gellert's gentle shushing and his thumb brushing his lips.

"It is endearing when you get flustered, Albus," he said softly, climbing onto his knees and leaning even closer. Unconsciously, Albus leant in too, his heart pulsing, twisting knots in his throat so it became harder and harder to breathe.

"Gellert," he murmured, trying again, "I can't..."

But before he remembered what it was he couldn't do, he allowed his eyes to flutter closed and lips met his.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, of silence. Thoughts were replaced by white noise, racing hearts were quietened as the woods around them hushed, waited.

And then all of hell erupted between them. Suddenly the world, a moment ago at arm's length, zoomed back into focus at twice it's normal size. Senses were heightened, sounds were louder, the world clamoured around them. It was like unlocking Pandora's box, and all the spirits broke free to torment the two. They hissed at Albus, teased him. Suddenly a lifetime of false smiles at girls, at holding hands and meaningless kisses was flung before him in a blooded heap. They told him he was wrong, that this was what he was, what he always had been.

"No!" Albus yelped, gathering all the strength he could muster and pushing Gellert off of him, falling backwards with the effort, "No, I can't! It's not me!" Gellert wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and frowned for a moment, before smiling again, that wondrous smile that suddenly made Albus wonder why he was angry.

"Is it not?" he asked jeeringly, "is this not what you have been vying for? Does your heart not leap when I do this?" Leaning over again, Gellert stroked Albus' face. Involuntarily, Albus' eyes closed and he leaned up again, propping himself up on one elbow, extending his own hand, allowing himself to caress Gellert's hair, allowing his fingers to curl around the back of his neck.

Slowly, much more slowly, he pulled him in again. It had the same effect, the world exploded with sound and light, birds miles away could be heard chirping but only just over the sound of drumming hearts. Albus relaxed slowly, melted into the kiss. He yielded to Gellert's every move, adopted them as if they were his own. It seemed like they had spent an eternity with their lips locked together, but when they pulled away it was over too soon.

They took a moment, panting, flopped on the ground beside each other. Albus' mind was frenzied, trying to put the pieces together, to understand what had just happened, why it had just happened, why he couldn't stop grinning.

"Have you done that before?" Albus asked, looking over at Gellert. His usually neat hair was ruffled and his cheeks were slightly flushed, but otherwise he still looked so cool.

"Yes, but you have not, I take it?" Albus shook his head. No, he had not, and he had never imagined it would feel like that. Right. "Well, you were good at it," Gellert smirked over at Albus, who grinned back at him with the goofy smile which persisted to hold his cheeks painfully tense.

"So there are others?" he asked, "Back home? Other boys who you..." he didn't know why he was asking, it shouldn't have mattered to him, but the intimacy they had just shared gave Albus this odd sense of possession over Gellert. He wanted him, all of him, he didn't want him to belong to another.

Gellert paused. "There were," he replied finally, "but none like you." Albus smiled and breathed in deeply. He could think of no time he had ever been happier. He was so happy, even, that almost without his registration the dew drops which had fallen from the leaves steadily began to climb again, awaiting no incantation, no flick of his wand. They rose around the faces of the pair, lingering like crystallised droplets of a liquid gold sun. Albus felt his heart rise with them, pulling him up off the ground, to his feet, turning his face to the sky and sighing contentedly.

Gellert didn't feel the need to stand, he only watched Albus from the ground, resting his hands behind his head, watching his creation. When he had first met Albus he was golden, but tarnished, melancholy. Though he had an inherent brightness it was clouded by dissatisfaction and grief. But now, he saw how he was polishing him, how he was slowly working away the smudges of his mother, father, his sister and his good for nothing brother. He saw Albus once again begin to gleam.


	3. We Fall In Love

When they returned home, Gellert took Albus to the graveyard and pointed out to him his first clue, the reason he had come to Godric's Hollow in the first place ("Didn't you come because you were expelled from Durmstrang?" Albus had asked, a question at which Gellert only chuckled but didn't answer).

"So this is where you take me?" Albus asked with a small smile, passing a hand over the top of a headstone, "The graveyard behind St Clementine's? Goodness, Gellert, I never thought you to be a romantic." Gellert, who was a few paces behind him, turned and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him forward and kissing him, smiling all the while. Then, he slid the hand down to Albus' own and intertwined their fingers, pulling him along slightly faster than they had gone before.

"I know you just did that to shut me up!" Albus called to him, the lingering laugh distorting the words into a tinkling vibrato.

"And it almost worked," Gellert replied, shooting him a sly smile before stopping abruptly before one of the older, if not the oldest, graves in the cemetery. Gellert's cockiness from before disappeared abruptly as he stood in stark silence in front of the grave, falling smoothly to a knee beside it. His face was tinted with a hue Albus had not yet seen, something he could only describe as reverence. Gellert touched the headstone as tenderly as he had touched Albus' cheek, had traced the name with his finger like he would a crucifix on his chest with holy water, though what Gellert sought was far from holy.

"Look at this," he breathed, "right here," pulling Albus down to sit next him and clutching onto his hand, he dragged his fingers over the Deathly Hallows symbol. "This was him, the third brother. He lived here," he looked around Godric's Hollow with eyes Albus had never worn, he didn't see this place as a prison but as a sanctuary, holding treasures.

So they searched Ignotus Peverell in every book in Albus' library and then in Bathilda's and then in the Ministry, finding scraps of family trees, letters to him, from him. They found his face lurking in the back of a faded and flaky portrait once, but by the time they spotted him he had run to a different frame.

And all the while they talked. Gellert confided in Albus his feelings towards muggles, explained how their own theory of Darwinism and genetics was _proof _that Wizards, as more evolved beings, were supposed to be on the top of the proverbial food chain rather than missing from it entirely, how muggles _had _to be rules over. Whilst at first Albus had vehemently disagreed on the basic principle that he had heard so much anti-muggle talk he couldn't associate himself with it at all, refused to hear any more on the subject. But the words had not been said to him with Gellert's voice, not whilst Gellert was wiping stray hairs from his face or tracing shapes on his palms or simply staring at him with those blue eyes, Only then, Albus thought, could he hear the truth clearly. Only then could he understand.

Albus had been sending Elphias letters in the time he couldn't spend with Gellert, mostly to keep his from going insane for want of the blonde boy. They contained these thoughts, those about how perhaps there was a way that wizards could reveal themselves to the muggle population, only the slightest hints of subservience. Sometimes he mentioned Gellert, but usually the thought of telling Elphias scared him.

Because what Albus was swiftly realising was that he was in love with Gellert Grindelwald. This he could not deny and it was this fact he treasured as his most precious artefact. It was the implication of his love he was not ready to face, how that changed his entire view of his life. Where once he had envisioned a wife and two children in a village quite like Godric's Hollow, now he only wanted Gellert, a man, for the rest of his life. But he wasn't... He couldn't be... How could he be when he couldn't even bring himself to think the word? It was this thought that plagued him when he was rescued by the hoot of a regal looking owl as it soared through his bedroom window and dropped a letter on his desk. It was Elphias', Prometheus, a beautiful and rare creature with sleek black feathers tipped with silver, a gift from Albus for his seventeenth birthday. Albus had found it himself in the Forbidden Forest and it had looked too elegant to live in its rough surroundings. Giving him a warm stroke Albus thanked him, giving him some water and seeds from a bowl on his windowsill for his own owl Profonde before he departed, and then excitedly breaking the seal.

The contents of the letter, however, left Albus unhappy.

_Dearest Albus,_

_I miss you here, my friend. There are a great many things I crave your insight on, a great many people I wish you could meet for they are all so interesting. All of us here send our love and hope that perhaps you may join us on our final leg of the journey through Italy if you can get away._ _But I must admit, Albus, some of the contents of your last letter quite worried me, especially your talk about muggles and their place below wizards. I don't like it when people say things like that, Albus, especially not people as bright-minded as you. It is up to us as the brightest minds of the Wizarding World to ensure that such ideals never make it to power, and yet you seem intent on doing just that for some greater good._

_I have other grievances, too, far more important ones. I see, for example, that you have made friends with the wizard Gellert Grindelwald. I have been told from those in Bulgaria, Albus, that I must warn you to be very wary of him. He is known to have done things, dark and terrible things. _

_I know you would never take me for a fool, Albus, but perhaps you think that there are some parts of you I have not seen. Though you may not believe it, I understand what this boy means to you. I do not judge, but I advise caution. I don't want to see you hurt, Albus._

_Your good friend,_

_Elphias. _

Albus frowned at the letter for a while. He had not imagined that Elphias would approve of Gellert, even he had not approved of him at Bathilda's predicament. And Elphias hadn't suffered the same… affliction Albus had. Upon seeing him Elphias' heart had not immediately melted, when touching him Elphias had not felt it tugged softly away, when kissing him Elphias had not allowed it to be entirely reclaimed. He also knew that his _personal preferences _were something of an open secret between the two of them, never spoken but ever present and never judged.

But it made him sad, because Albus found a boy he had loved, finally, and now he could not share him. But he had always known in some way that Gellert was never meant for sharing. Their love was one of dark shadows and cemeteries and random forests on the outskirts of the world. Their love was never spoken, never seen, never known by those outside and though their love was so lonely Albus would have followed it to the ends of the Earth.

So, saddened, Albus crumpled up the letter from Elphias and used it for kindling in the centre of the room, setting it on fire with his wand and watching the script slowly smoulder as he laid down in bed. He had suddenly become very cold.

And so to warm him, strong arms snaked around his shoulders, pulled him into a well built chest. Warm breath tickled the hairs on the back of his neck as knees tucked in behind his own. How Gellert had known he was needed was a mystery, but as the final embers of his little fire began to die Albus was grateful for the company, for the hands which roved up and down his arms, for the lips at the nape of his neck, for the boy who curled himself around him and shielded him from the impending cold.

"For the greater good," Albus breathed, watching the hissing remains of the letter.

"What was that?" Gellert asked, and Albus could feel the smile pressed into the back of his head.

"It's why we're doing it, ruling the muggles I mean. We're doing it for the greater good." Gellert nodded slowly, the smile didn't change, it only hesitated a moment before morphing into beautiful words.

"You always see the good," he noted, turning the words over in his mind. It was something Gellert couldn't do, something he had never allowed himself to do as he strove for power, something more plentiful in its darker corners. But Albus, not only did he see the light, he _was _the light so absolutely that just standing near him was almost blinding to Gellert. Which led him to say the next words, ones he wasn't even aware were true until they had been murmured into Albus' blonde curls.

"I love you."

Albus stopped breathing. He stopped thinking. An involuntary shiver ran down his spine from the point of Gellert's lips, the entry point and the epicentre. He felt his entire body numbed as he realised he could only feel them now, and could only hunger for them on his own. So, reluctant to lose his comfortable position lest he never find it again, Albus turned and allowed his lips to find Gellert's in the semi-darkness by the light of rotten, disapproving words.

"I love you too."

Albus relinquished all ownership of his heart, signed it entirely over to Gellert. He would accept any scraps as payment, an aorta or a pulmonary vein, he didn't need the whole thing, he just wanted some part of Gellert, a part he could cherish in his now empty ribcage, which he could claim for his own and treasure.

The words were so inadequate for how Albus felt that night, love was a term so cheapened by the tongues of unfeeling hearts that they meant little even when given true intentions. Children, he thought, children who couldn't understand this true love, had ruined the words for him and now he had no alternative. So Albus fell asleep in Gellert's arms that night knowing that he more-than-loved him and wished for some amorous alternative.


	4. We Show Our Scars

It was hard to separate dream from reality that morning. When Albus awoke, he was greeted with a soft haze of sunlight filtered through his curtains, reflecting off of dust particles so he was surrounded by tiny golden stars. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday and his shirt was heavy with stale sweat. But most importantly, he was not alone. Still protecting him from the outside world was Gellert, whose deep and even breaths tickled the hairs on the back of Albus' neck comfortingly.

Albus felt for the arms he had been so sure last night were around him to find with relief that they were still there, strong and warm. Slowly he caressed them, so thankful for the corporeal, for the tangible. As he passed long, delicate fingers over Gellert's arms, tracing loving words, the boy behind him stirred and stretched, and Albus shivered as he felt lips pressed into the top of his head, suddenly hungering for them on his own.

He unpicked himself from Gellert's arms and turned so that his knees knocked against the boy in his bed's, placing a hand on Gellert's chest as Gellert's arm fell back to cross over his body, resting in the crook of his waist. He watched his hand for a while, pressing into Gellert's chest, feeling the steady drumming of his own heart against his fingertips. He smiled as he remembered again what wasn't a dream. He smiled as he remembered that Gellert loved him.

He could feel Gellert staring at him, he could feel his eyes searching, trying to read him, trying to see what he was thinking. But Albus wasn't thinking, he only continued to feel his heart beat in Gellert's chest where he had placed it carefully in the darker hours and where it looked so perfect now when seen in the full morning light. Slowly, Albus allowed himself to look up into the eyes of the boy he loved.

A breath caught in his throat. Nobody had ever looked at him in the way Gellert was looking at him now. His eyes were soft on his, and rather than their usual penetrating gaze they instead seemed to sweep easily through him, over him, drawing in each part of Albus to add to his collection, hanging them precariously on the shelves of his ribcage with pieces of silver thread tied in perfect bows. Albus wondered what he ever could have done to deserve him, to deserve the look of absolute love he had longed for from Gellert since the day they met. It was a look that made him want to strive for greatness, that made him want to be everything he could have been before but this time not for academia or the admiration of his peers, now he wanted to be the greatest wizard of his time so that Gellert would keep looking at him with his soft blue eyes as if Albus was the greatest and most interesting thing in the world.

"I love you," Albus said with a smile, his words stirring the air so that it rose with the golden dust above the two of them and hung there like mistletoe. Gellert's lips curved into a relaxed, reciprocal smile but the look in his eyes did not fade, it instead intensified.

"I love you too," he said, knowing that Albus had only said so because he wanted to hear him say it again.

"Do you?" he asked teasingly and Gellert had clutched Albus' arm reassuringly and propped himself up on the other elbow so that his face hung above Albus'.

"Albus," he began, stooping down to place a kiss at the base of Albus' neck, "Percival," he breathed, tilting his head up slightly to kiss higher on Albus' neck. Involuntarily Albus shuddered and released a shaky breath, tipping his head up to allow Gellert better access. "Wulfric," Gellert brushed his lips against the skin below Albus' jawline, "Brian," he said, dropping his voice comically as he swooped down again to nip his earlobe, "Dumbledore," the word was a hoarse whisper as Gellert found himself hovering inches from Albus' face.

"Gellert," Albus breathed, throwing his arms around Gellert's neck and closing the gap between them, feeling for his lips with his own, kissing him intently. His hands roved up and down his back, longing for the flesh underneath his shirt. He felt Gellert curve his arms under him and wrap around the small of his back, pulling him closer. They must have been kissing for what felt like hours, memorising each other's bodies with their fingertips, committing to memory each swell and dip and arc, learning how the other moved and breathed, how one would yield when the other touched.

It inspired a new intimacy between the two of them. It inspired conspiratorial smiles they both shared that nobody else could decipher. It meant that from then on they were closer, sitting a fraction nearer, brushing hairs out of eyes and grazing hands and leaning into each other marginally more.

From then on Albus could barely stand to be without him, he needed him every minute of every day to keep from going mad. He longed for his touch even when they were together, and was inconsolable when they were apart, lying in his bed and wishing for Gellert to join him, where he most often did. Albus' bed became their sanctuary. It was here they shared innocent kisses and learnt about each other and waited breathlessly for dawn.

And when it came they would watch the sparkling dust, their own personal constellations, and wonder idly whether it truly sparkled or whether it was the glossy tint of eyes clouded by love.

Albus stopped spending time with his siblings completely, unable to handle their incompetence any further when he now had the gleaming comparison of Gellert, Gellert who was perfect and who, even if his brother wanted to emulate him, would not even be close enough to the original for consideration he was so flawless. Albus' hands had explored every inch of him, rivers and valleys, and had found not a blemish which did not sit perfectly and contentedly as if it belonged.

Aberforth never complained, not that he really saw Albus enough to voice any complaints, but the two knew in the unspoken way that brothers do, as distant as they were, that this was better. Ever since his return Albus had longed for an escape and Aberforth had wished for him to have one so that he and Ariana would be free of his uncertainty and awkwardness around them.

Albus also replied to Elphias, a short and blunt letter that he was doing well and that Elphias should enjoy himself on the rest of his trip. He mentioned nothing of Gellert or of their plans for the greater good. The letter seemed cordial, but he knew reading it Elphias would know he had hurt his friend, hence the curt nature of his words instead of his usual long-winded and insightful ramblings on a topic the two of them loved and nobody else understood. It was irrational and immature but Albus sent it with Profonde anyway, feeling suddenly bitter in a way he never had when his best friend came to mind.

"You're still thinking of him, aren't you?" Gellert asked as they skipped stones across a lake somewhere in the Peak District.

"Who?" Albus sighed. He made no real attempt to conceal the fact that he knew exactly who Gellert was talking about, any effort would have been futile. Gellert could read him easily, sometimes just from the sound of his voice.

"I know you are sad about your friend, Albus, but what can you expect? We will have opposition, of course, there will be people who don't understand that what we are doing is for the best. I am sorry that one of those people is this Mr Doge but there is no point dwelling on it now." As he said this, a thought flashed thought Albus' mind, and then immediately sounded so ludicrous he snorted out loud.

"Gellert Grindelwald, are you jealous?" Albus asked with a small smile. Gellert shook his head vigorously then paused, shrugged and chuckled.

"Maybe," he mused, "although I don't think I could really be jealous of some English boy."

"Especially considering he is decidedly straight," Albus added. The words felt odd coming out of his mouth, they made his heart feel suddenly heavy as he said them. It was as close as he had yet come to admitting he was… The separation of straight and… The admission that he was, himself, the latter was almost too much for him. He had no problem knowing he was in love with Gellert, but he was still grappling with what it all meant.

But as, amidst the kisses and falling asleep together each night, Albus grew closer to Gellert, he realised that one day he would have to face the truth. He would have to face his affliction, as he had once so inadequately put it, and accept all that it was to be with the boy who had captured his heart.

And furthermore, he decided, it was to be that night.

Gellert and Albus spent their day by the lake planning their world domination and tenderly kissing.

Finally, when they had quite tired of the fading light of the forest and their cyclical conversations on the Greater Good, Gellert asked if they should go. Albus stood but paused.

"Not home, not yet, I want you to meet somebody." Gellert furrowed his eyebrows. It was customary of Albus to hide Gellert from the people in he knew. They didn't go to many public places together, and when the librarian in the Ministry library had warmly greeted Albus and asked him who Gellert was, Albus shrugged uncomfortably and mumbled that he was 'just a friend'.

"Well where are we going then?" In reply, Albus offered his arm. "Side-along," he noted, "Cryptic." Still Albus said no more, so Gellert sighed and took the arm, grimacing as Albus turned on his heel.

Gellert raised his eyebrows at Albus' choice of destination. "You said graveyards were unromantic." Albus didn't smile, he only cast a sidelong look at Gellert before picking his way between the dead, looking for his own personal lost. Growing curious, Gellert tried to ask again, "So, not that I am not fond of graves Albus, but what are we doing here?"

"I want you to meet somebody," he confessed finally as he paused in front of a newer grave. The headstone was of grey marble and dainty, sloping letters carved into its face claimed it to be the residence of Kendra Dumbledore, loving mother and much missed friend.

"Hello, Mother," Albus breathed with a small smile as he sank to sit in the dew-dampened ground beside the grave. Uncomfortable, Gellert stood a little way away, almost out of earshot, as he watched the boy begin to talk to the corpse of a woman he had barely seen in her final days.

Albus muttered things for a while, ramblings about school and his siblings. He told her how Elphias was doing on his Grand Tour, how he didn't mind missing it, not really, not now that he had Gellert.

He sighed.

"I think you always knew," he started and then stopped. He blew out a breath before continuing. "That summer after fifth year when I brought Melinda Marbury to Godric's Hollow and flaunted her in front of you and all you could tell me was to let her down easily even though I had convinced myself that I was in love with her."

From his place, a hand resting on the gravestone of some other poor deceased soul, Gellert heard Albus choke back a sob.

"Obviously I didn't love her, but I would never have allowed you to trample on my childish whims. I wish you could have told me sometimes what you suspected, I wish I would have listened if you had. Maybe I would have met him faster.

"Because I am in love with him, mother. It was decided for me by the stars long before I knew it myself, that I was to love Gellert Grindelwald whether I wanted to or not."

With glistening eyes Albus turned to Gellert finally. He looked like he was trying not to cry, his teeth violently clenched in a smile, his face reddening with the effort. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and when he opened them a single tear rolled down his cheeks whilst the rest hung from his eyelashes. He extended a hand and Gellert took it tentatively as Albus drew him near, kneeling beside him.

"We didn't talk much," he admitted, "or at least she didn't, not after my father. She always seemed to know things though, my mother, even when we weren't saying anything. She talked to Aberforth more, about Ariana mostly. The two of them, their lives revolve around my sister..."

"Revolved," Gellert interjected before he could stop himself. Albus paused.

"I suppose in her case yes, I sometimes forget her affiliation to the past tense nowadays, I never really said goodbye."

"If you want, it is possible," Gellert reminded him, Albus nodded.

"But I like to believe she's here anyway, even if I can't see her, watching me. I want her to see when I do this," he raised the hand that still clung to Gellert's and interlaced their fingers. "I want her to hear it when I say I love you," Gellert smiled. "I want her to know that she had a gay son, and that he was going to be alright with that."

Albus suddenly felt lighter, free almost. He felt like a layer had been stripped from him, like he had shed some invisible skin upon which he had lain a lifetime of trying to be so incredibly straight. He hadn't realised in that time what had penetrated. Upon him he saw bruises and scars, all the girls whose hearts were needlessly wounded, all the boys who never knew they had wounded his.

"These are my scars," he explained to Gellert, pointing to his mother's grave. "A mother who never knew who I was, stories of girls who will never understand what went wrong, a life of lies, they all lie here, and here a bury them."

Gellert watched as Albus pulled out his wand and conjured a single, long stemmed rose and placed it upon the grave. His mind was whirling. Albus had been valuable to him, would be valuable to him. That was why he had kept him around all this time. He would have known that eventually Albus would fall in love with him and that he would have to feign it back. It was ok, Gellert was a good liar.

But as he watched Albus sink his scars within the ground he felt something he couldn't deny anymore, something which had been pushing at the boundaries of the switch he kept on his emotions, always turned to _off_. He felt for his chest, where just that morning Albus's heart had beat safely beside his own to find one missing. Like a thief Albus had stolen it. Gellert had not been lying. Now, his own scars called.

"You show me yours, I show you mine," Gellert decided aloud, offering his own arm. With a final glance towards his mother Albus nodded and took it, grimacing as Gellert turned on his heel and the graveyard was left empty once more. A petal fluttered from the rose left leaning against the grey marble of the final resting place of Kendra Dumbledore, loving mother and much kissed friend.

They were in Albus' bedroom again, the only light a copy of the _Prophet_ Gellert had set alight in the middle of the room. Wincing, Gellert began to undo the buttons of his shirt.

"These are my scars," he told Albus as he pulled the material off.

In the half light they flickered like veins etched into his skin, Gellert's scars were long and thin and plentiful, intertwining and lacing in delicately grotesque patterns. Each was deep and long, precise and torturous webs of pain. They snaked up his chest and over his shoulders, plunging down his back.

Gellert wouldn't meet Albus' eye as Albus stood from the bed where he sat to approach the boy.

"Gellert," he breather, horrified, "where did you get these from?" Gellert's eyes glimmered but he didn't answer, he only shook his head as his lip quivered. Albus ran fingers over them, drawing them back whenever Gellert flinched, violently biting his lip.

"It doesn't matter," he said decidedly, "you are still the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes upon," Gellert shook his head, a small whimper escaping his lips. Some voice deep inside him, one which had once been so prominent, told him that he was being a wimp, a coward, it scolded him. He ignored it, it was easier to ignore when Albus was close.

With the back of his hand Albus caressed Gellert's cheek. "Yes you are." He assured him and Gellert allowed a sob to break from his lips.

"I'm a monster," Gellert insisted, and yet Albus continued to stroke his cheek.

"No you aren't, you're beautiful," he told him firmly. "Even when you cry."

And then Albus did something Gellert had never experienced before. He pulled him close and simply hugged him, asking no more of him, allowing him to cry. Albus showed him pure kindness of a kind he had never even experienced, a paternal sort of love and cooing and shushing. Gellert found himself unable to stop the flood of years of tears which broke their dams and washed away the blood caked upon his bare chest where he had never allowed a single drop of brine to touch.

And all the while Albus hugged him and told him he was beautiful.


	5. We Share

Each scar was a story, each bruise violent verse. As Albus traced each, Gellert unpicked them all, untangled the blood sodden mass and found their origin, placing them neatly where they belonged amongst his menagerie of tragedy. Each crude line accounted for, Gellert began to explain.

"He called himself my father," he recounted slowly, "I only knew him as the man who came in the night. He would do things," Gellert gulped down the memories which lodged themselves in his throat and Albus placed a comforting hand on the back of his neck, teasing his fingers through the small blonde curls.

"You don't have to tell me," Albus said, despite how much he wanted to hear. He wanted to see every wound so that he may have the best chance of healing Gellert, of finding all the pieces so he could place them meticulously back together. But every word was another scratch to him, every pain Gellert had ever suffered he shared with words spoken in a throaty whisper as he tried desperately to still appear strong.

"It hurt so much," Gellert's voice broke as he persisted, and with it a fragment of Albus. The urge to shush him ran through his every sinew, to cradle him and tell him he didn't have to say anything, didn't have to think about it. But he didn't, because the words weren't true. Gellert passed a hand down the scars on his chest.

"These are only the ones made from dark magic, the ones he was unable to heal. There were others though," immediately pearly teeth clamped down on Gellert's lip and he stopped talking. Albus threw and arm over his neck and cradled his head in his chest, rocking slowly back and forth as Gellert began to cry again.

"The nights were full of pain," his thick voice quavered, "the mornings full of dittany. I never saw him then, my mother would clean my wounds and let me cry, sometimes I found her crying as well." He collapsed again into Albus' chest, seeking the warmth he had never had in the days the scars dated back to.

Albus had no words, nothing comparable to the agony Gellert wept into his chest, but Gellert didn't need him to say anything, he just needed him as a constant so Albus would not only be his sun, the light, but also the Earth, his rock.

"They got worse as I got older. He would tease me, he saw the boys I was with..." finding strength from his wealth stored up over years of hardship, Gellert sat up and wiped his eyes- a futile effort considering the flood still coursing down his cheeks. "Durmstrang wasn't an escape, the other boys were kind to me for a while, until once I kissed one of them." Here Albus could begin to relate, Gellert's reality was the realisation of all of Albus' nightmares. "When they found out what I was," his eyes widened in awful reminiscence as within the flames of the burning Prophet his memories danced in a masquerade of horrors.

And then, it fell terrifyingly blank. "So I did what I had to do,"

"With dark magic?" These were the first words Albus had spoken since they Gellert had begun to tell his story, and it was a question that would weight heavily in the air. Finally, when Gellert didn't answer, Albus tried again. "But Gellert, your father used dark magic..."

"And he was the most powerful wizard I ever knew." Gellert's eyes darkened. "He did terrible, powerful things, my father. I thought the dark was the only way to be as powerful so he could never hurt me again." As quickly as it had come the dark in his eyes were gone, replaced with the sort of look that had made Albus glow with pride that first night they had talked.

"And then I met you, a wizard who had never practiced dark magic, and you are so strong Albus, so much stronger than he was, almost stronger than me." Gellert slid a hand around his neck and pulled him into a desperate kiss, pressing his lips hard against Albus'. When he finally released him the sobs had ebbed, but occasionally still shook his body.

When they had stopped entirely, Gellert drew his wand from a strap around his ankle and Albus cringed as he lifted the tears away with a spell he'd never heard before. He wondered how many times in his life Gellert had had to use it, he wondered at what terribly young age had Gellert had to start.

But when Gellert turned to him, all such thoughts were forgotten. Without sweeping a glance down over the entirety of his body, one could almost imagine that Gellert had never come to any harm throughout his life, for only this could justify the look of absolute elation as he looked back towards Albus. Where a quivering lip had once been was now replaced by a wide smile and Gellert's eyes gleamed.

"And I love you," he said as if it had just occurred to him, "And you love me, and so we are each other's," he pulled Albus into a kiss again, this time smiling into his lips as he wrapped one arm tightly around his neck and tangled the hand of the other in his hair, pulling him impossibly close. Taken quite by surprise, Albus put his hands on his waist, feeling beneath him the bumps and ridges that he was becoming to know as Gellert.

"You're mine," Gellert whispered into his lips, and Albus knew at once it was true. And he couldn't have wanted to be Gellert's more.

"I'm yours," he confirmed.

That night, Albus learned that the scars covered all of Gellert's body, and he toiled to kiss every one better.

Bliss hung above them in the air the next morning, tickling them tenderly, waiting for them to wake. Gellert opened his eyes first, rolling his head over to find Albus still snuggled into his chest as he had left him last night. Looking at the white of his bare back which almost glowed in the morning light, Gellert remembered the rest of last night. It had not been the first time for Gellert, and he had never imagined it could feel that way. He and Albus rocked worlds together, changed tides, rearranged stars.

When it was over, the shame that often frequented Albus after days with Gellert was gone. There was no possibility that this was 'unnatural,' as a cruel muggle boy had once called it. They were not defying nature, they had moved with her, felt her very heartbeat within the racing of their own. It was inconceivable that nature had not intended something which had felt so undeniably right. They had hit heaven together, and when they arrived there was no disapproving god to smite them.

Albus didn't want to open his eyes. To open his eyes was to admit it was morning, and the morning meant the end of Albus' night. So instead he felt Gellert breathing beneath him, felt his head rise and fall with Gellert's chest, and decided they would just shut the blinds and stay here forever, they could live in a nighttime of their own creation.

But finally the urge to see Gellert overcame his irrationality. His eyes fluttered open as he looked up at Gellert. The boy's eyes were turned away, a faraway look pirouetting within them. Albus shook his head. Maybe once he would ask him for his thoughts, now he only needed to see his eyes.

"Gellert?" he breathed, watching as the name stirred the hairs on Gellert's chest and meandered up his body to his ears.

"Yes, my love?" he asked, turning to look back upon Albus, who sighed as he was rewarded with the cloudless blue of his eyes. Whatever trivial question Albus was going to ask to call his attention vanished, fleeing quickly from the tip of his tongue so he was left speechless in the presence of Gellert's beauty. Understandingly, when Albus found himself quite unable to respond, he placed a hand on his cheek and rubbed his thumb over the corner of Albus' lip. "I love you too," he assured him.

The day was mostly spent in Albus' bed, their wonderland of duvet and bare skin. They weren't disturbed and they refused to leave, settling their growling stomachs with Albus' stash of muggle confectionery. For a delightful day there was no world, there was only Gellert and Albus and the bed, upon which the two would sit and talk and lie in each other's arms and ignore the calls of the outside in its futile attempt to remind the lovers it would be waiting for them when the emerged.

Finally, as the sun began to set again Gellert pulled on his cloak and trousers, asking Albus to give him the grand tour he had missed on all those occasions when Albus only wanted out of the house to be with him without the company of his siblings.

Albus showed him every nook and cranny save the bedrooms of Aberforth and Ariana, and Gellert inspected them all with unadulterated fascination, collecting them all to add to the pile of Albus he stored within him, finding new things to love about him.

They entered the living room tentatively, wary of Ariana's presence. After only a step within the threshold Gellert let out a small gasp. Albus immediately placed a hand on his arm, jumping at the sudden sharp sound.

"What is it?" he hissed, worrying that loud voices may spark another one of Ariana's tantrums.

"A piano! Do you play?" Gellert's eyes were lit up like a child's when given a new toy, and he scurried towards the dusty old instrument and perched on the edge of the stool, patting the seat beside him lightly, beckoning Albus to join. As he did so, dust sprang from beneath his fingertips and glittered in the orange soaked room, the sunset dousing all in its final flush. Reluctantly, Albus joined him and sat, lifting the lid of the piano.

The keys were yellowed, paint flaking off onto the piano stool, just lifting the lid had sent up a flurry of dust. The piano was the picture of disrepair, of things neglected. Albus placed his fingers over the keys in a _C major _and pressed his right foot down on the tarnished bronze pedal.

The note was scratchy and vibrated in that way that meant the piano was out of tune. Albus quickly sprang back from the noise and whipped his head around, looking to see if Ariana had stirred. She only sat unperturbed in her chair and stared into the middle distance, looking at nothing in particular with unnerving intensity.

The piano brought a sort of sad nostalgia to Gellert's mind. He had once known a boy to be streaked with smudges, to be roughened a little at the edges. But Gellert had refined him and varnished him, and now he shone with a glare so bright it blinded even Gellert. He wondered if he could do it again.

"It just needs a little polish," he assured Albus, drawing out his wand and tapping it against the table. He sent a ripple through the wood, and everywhere it went a smooth and shiny finish followed, keys re-erected themselves, whitened and gleaming like teeth in a wide smile. Soon the piano was new again, and Albus felt a shiver run down his spine as he rested his fingertips against the keys.

The sound was bright as he played the chord again. Gellert smiled as Albus felt for the notes he had once known as he settled back comfortably into the land of music to which he had once belonged.

He began with a simple sonata, a particular favourite of his once, mainly because it had always been most likely to make Ariana smile. With the ease of a midsummer's breeze Albus' fingers danced along the keys in well practiced pliés and arabesques, filling the room with melodious trills and chords. The haze which seemed to hang heavy in the room fled, banished by the crescendo of the chirrup of the piano when suddenly a tinkling note added its own harmony.

The laugh did not belong to Gellert.

Turning back but never allowing his tune to falter, Albus saw for the briefest of moments a smile grace Ariana's face, and remembered once again how beautiful she was. He was also struck, suddenly, by how much she looked like their mother.

Spurred on by his new audience, Albus began to deviate from the simple melody. Re-familiarising himself with the notes, he allowed his fingers to wander, joined in the thrill as before him a new piece began to form. The sounds spread through the air like a wave of sunlight, somehow brightening the room. The notes brought with them their own emotions, soaked the room in euphoria, tunnelled through the floor and up within the walls and pulsed with it, sending shivers down the spines of those captive to its melody with each haunting soprano tone.

Albus wasn't playing the piano, he was painting with the skill of Picasso, sculpting like Michelangelo, writing the sonnets of Shakespeare. Albus was fashioning his own art in the shape of the boy who teetered on the edge of his stool, moulded him out of _B flat_ and defined him with inflections. Each note was a word he couldn't express, another confession of love vulgar when made mortal by inadequate words. It was Gellert's song and no matter how hard its patrons listened they would never be able to recreate it to quite feel as it did in that moment.

It came to its legato end as the final ember of sunset hissed and the sun dropped over the side of the Earth once more, and as Albus turned to Gellert he saw again tears in the boy's eyes. He didn't need to tell him to know that Gellert understood. The song had been for him, had _been _him. And it was perhaps the most enchanting piece of music ever heard by human ears.

Tangling his hands in Albus' hair, Gellert kissed him.

And as he did so and Ariana laughed and Albus held his foot on the pedal for the final _G_, Aberforth entered.


	6. We Fight

Albus' foot flew immediately off the pedal and the note darted from the room like a hare sensing a hunter. He pulled away from Gellert as Aberforth's eyes fixed on the pair of them and stood, as if a teacher had called him out in class and he was ready to be reprimanded. In response, Gellert also stood and angled himself in between Albus and Aberforth. It was an odd sight, really it was Gellert who should have needed protection, Aberforth was Albus' brother.

But Gellert knew that this was the confrontation that Albus had always dreaded, he knew that this was the truth he never wanted to tell so he hid it in his bed and loved it in privacy. And Albus was his and he loved him, he could not let him be hurt.

_Ever. _

Albus placed a hand on Gellert's arm as if to relax him. _It's alright, _he was saying, but Gellert could feel his hand trembling.

"Don't you touch him," Aberforth growled, to Gellert rather than to Albus. He wouldn't even look at Albus now. Gellert cocked his head indignantly.

"I think you will find that _he _touched _me._" he pointed out, placing his own hand atop Albus' which he was trying to retract so as not to further anger his brother. Then, through the tense silence came a harrumph as Ariana realised that the last piece had ended and Albus was not going to play another one. A violet flush ran up Aberforth's neck and blossomed around his face.

"_Ariana?_" he asked, incredulously and angrily, "You would do something like this in front of my little sister? Something so… so…" he struggled for the word a while, fists clenched by his sides. "Something so _filthy?_" There it was, filthy. Like Gellert and Albus were dirty. Like they had been playing in the mud and didn't take their shoes off when they came back inside. Like they had run around in circles leaving trails of dirt on the pristine carpet. Filthy.

"It's not filthy," Albus said finally, "it's just love."

"Love!" Aberforth spluttered, "With _him_? It's unnatural! It's evil! It's _disgusting._" Right then Gellert had grabbed his wand off the top of the piano and aimed it right at Aberforth.

"Say another word," he dared in a dark tone, stepping away from Albus and towards his brother, wand charged, the safety off, ready to fire. In response, Aberforth pulled out his own wand. It was a pathetic sight, one of the best wizards Albus had ever met matched against his brother with his mediocre, fourth year magic.

"Foul, abhorrent, wrong," Aberforth shot the words at him like his own spells, and whilst they deflected right off Gellert they hit Albus, each one searing through him. Tiny raindrops of acid.

"You insolent boy!" Gellert yelled and before he had time to shoot a spell his wand was out of his hand and safely back in Albus'.

"Gellert, no," Albus pleaded, when suddenly a spell hit him square in the chest, a full body bind sent from Aberforth, who proceeded to lift him into the air.

"How dare you try and save me? How dare you even look at me after what you've done, in front of our sister no less? What would mother say if she saw you now? What would she think of her son, her wonderful Albus, in his bedroom doing despicable things with this boy? Plotting against the muggles! What would she think about her _disgusting faggot son?_"

Albus struggled against the body bind, feeling Gellert's wand prised from his fingers in order to deal with the little rascal who had decided he wanted to have this fight.

"Don't you dare," Gellert was saying, Albus couldn't reach his wand, he couldn't do wandless magic, he could only watch.

"Don't get any closer, queer," he warned. With a relaxed, smug smile Gellert stepped a step closer. "_Crucio!_" Aberforth exclaimed and Albus' eyes flew wide open and terrified at the thought of seeing Gellert hurt. But the spell had no effect. Gellert took another step forward. A slow, cruel step, as if this next part he was going to enjoy.

"Oh no, no you can't just _say _it," Gellert shook his head and tutted, "No you have to _mean _it, like this, _Crucio._" In front of Albus' eyes his brother contorted in pain and fell to the ground, pursing his lips until Gellert twisted his wand and he couldn't hold it in any longer, releasing a long broken scream of pain which sounded horribly like the word _please. _The scream rattled through Albus as he felt a surge of emotion run through him and suddenly he was free, on the ground and his wand was in his hand.

"_Stupefy!_" he yelled, and immediately Aberforth's mouth flew shut as the pain ceased and Gellert was thrown across the room and fell in a heap on the floor, blood tricking down his neck from where the back of his head had impacted with the wall. Aberforth scrambled to his feet and pointed his wand at Albus.

"So that's your type, huh?" Aberforth asked mockingly, if not a little breathless. "You go for the crazy murderous ones?" Albus felt a knot twist in his stomach. Another drop of acid. It was nothing, a little fall of rain, it didn't hurt he told himself, refusing to look at the welts each little drop left on his skin. Albus trained his wand on Gellert who was standing now. He didn't want to hurt him, but he didn't want him to hurt Aberforth either. At least Gellert knew what he was capable of.

He raised his wand and suddenly the room was filled with streams of light from every direction. Spells unheard over the din of other spells being cast rebounded and bounced around the house. One hit the ashtray on the coffee table, another scorched a hole in the wall. Suddenly everything began to shake and the lights began to flicker. And suddenly they all remembered.

_Ariana. _

She stood from her chair, her face no longer devoid of all emotion but filled with a terrifying rage. Her usually empty eyes flamed with anger and as we watched, her mouth opened to release a scream.

Two voices left her mouth. The first was the usually unheard voice of Ariana, the second was the unnatural shriek of a banshee which shook the room with more force and dimmed the lights to almost out and then glaringly bright. Gellert shot a spell at her to try and stop the chaos, and then Aberforth shot a spell at him for trying to curse his sister and the fight restarted, each spell released now accompanied by another voice added to Ariana's scream as the house swayed dangerously from side to side.

Albus felt a sense of panic as he looked around the situation. His brother and his lover engaged in battle, his sister screaming and furious. He watched as Gellert's mouth smiled slightly in one corner as he spoke another curse, almost with pleasure as he thought of its effects. He watched as Aberforth tried desperately to counter them, in his blind state of fury. Albus saw all of this in slow motion as he felt his own wand moving almost of its own accord, adding to the cacophony of curses. In slow motion he saw a green spell from some indeterminate origin fly in some direction and faintly remembered something, something he didn't want it to hit.

Suddenly the screaming stopped, and the house stilled, and the lights turned back on. And suddenly they all remembered.

_Ariana. _

Death was an odd feeling. It wasn't a crashing or a slamming or a sudden harrowing realisation. It was more like an awareness, and awareness of four lives in a room one minute, and three the next. Like one had been snuffed out, easily and without a sound.

Still clutching our wands we ran to where Ariana had been standing only seconds earlier to find her in a crumpled heap on the floor, her eyes open and hollow and lifeless as they had been almost all of her short life.

Aberforth fell to his knees beside her and gathered her up in his arms, cradling her head on his lap as he teased his fingers through her mane of golden hair. Lovingly he stroked her cheek and smiled sadly. He was shushing her, saying things softly to her.

"It's Ok, Ana, it's all going to be Ok. You're going to be fine. I love you Ana, it's all going to be fine, Ana, I love you," and as each lie sank into his skin he finally felt it, the emptiness of the corpse he was holding, the loss of the life in the room, the snuffing of the candle. And slowly he allowed tears to fall and to roll down his neck and drop onto his shaking shoulders. Still he held her, and with a thick voice he continued to comfort her. "It's Ok," he persisted, "Everything's going to be fine."

Ariana looked more alive in death than she did in life. As Aberforth placed two fingers on her eyelids and pushed them down, she could have been sleeping. Her mouth, slightly parted, could have been just about to giggle. For all anyone knew she could have used those legs to skip in circles and used those fingers to pick berries and pop them into that slightly parted mouth. In death Ariana could have been anyone, and not the practically dead girl who had haunted this room for so long.

Albus felt her passing like an emptiness, like something swiped from him, something he couldn't quite place his finger on. It was like somebody had carved a small circle out of his stomach and now he felt it like a piece missing. It wasn't entirely sad but sorrowful. It felt more like a shame than a tragedy.

But still Aberforth mourned for her, his words now completely consumed by his wails as with each centimetre the moon rose the reality of her passing dawned on him. He was now alone, once having been the bigger half of their broken family the Dumbledore name was now split into two perfect pieces. Albus and Aberforth. There was a two out of three chance one of them had killed their sister, and this fact was the seal on the contract which stated their relationship eternally irreparable.

Laying Ariana's head on a pillow he had grabbed from her armchair, Aberforth stood slowly and turned to Albus and Gellert, who now refused to look at each other.

"Get out." He said flatly, wiping a tear off the tip of his nose. "The two of you, right now and _you,_" he tilted his chin towards Albus, not even gracing him with a name, "never bring him back here again." Albus never heard Aberforth call him by his name again.

They left the house in silence, Albus casting a last, longing glance at his sister who, only moments before, had laughed for the first time since his mother died. Now she and his mother could laugh together.

Gellert knew it then; he felt it like the volume of all the oceans, the distance between them. There was a two out of three chance one of them had killed Ariana. Two thirds. This fraction had been breaking a lot of hearts tonight. When they were outside, standing on the front lawn of his house, Albus finally spoke.

"Gellert," he began but his voice broke. His teeth clamped down over his bottom lip and he shook his head. _I will not cry. _It was there that Gellert saw it again. Pain. Gellert knew it like an old friend, and recognised it in an instant. This was what Albus was trying to hide as he bit his lip and clenched his fists. Seeing this was what gave Gellert the strength to wade through the oceans and close the distance between them.

He grabbed Albus' head and tangled his fingers in his hair, kissing him desperately. Albus threw his arms around his neck and pulled him in tighter, trying to close all the cracks so the water couldn't force its way in again. With each passing moment they felt the pressure of events build around them until it was almost too much to bear. With one final and desperate kiss they fell apart and reality flooded back to fill the space between them.

In pain there is truth. In Albus' pain Gellert saw this truth; he could never have Albus. Albus was good, the best of all the people Gellert had ever known. Up until now Gellert had characterised Albus' goodness as something high and bright and blinding, but seeing his compassion and his pain Gellert realised it was not only in the sky but in the ground and in the air. Albus had so much good it was selfish for one person to keep it.

Albus could not be Gellert's because everybody needed a piece of Albus Dumbledore, the world needed him to share his goodness and not to devote it all to Gellert, somebody decidedly broken, an unworthy cause. But Albus _was_ Gellert's.

And he couldn't be any more.


	7. You Leave

A few minutes. They felt like eons. They had travelled a lightyear, Albus and Gellert now looked at each other through aged eyes. They were not the same as they had been a few minutes ago. They had entered a tunnel to emerge two very different people at the end of it. The Gellert of a few minutes ago had sworn he would never hurt Albus. This Gellert was about to do just that.

They stood on the front lawn still, facing each other in the unquiet darkness. The air had a chill about it despite the warmth of August. It was the sort of chill mother nature brought to remind you she was still watching, that she knew. It was the sort of chill she brought out for the sole purpose of pathetic fallacy.

The two felt oddly short of breath as they stared at each other, each searching the eyes of the other. In Albus' eyes Gellert saw confusion of what was in his own. A sad determination to return Albus to the people of the world who needed him, glazed with an ice-cold steel.

It crept on them like a fog, a hazy mist which they could barely see, but as they stood it rose and thickened, swirling around their knees in a translucent pool. Long fingers of cloud groped them, hauling itself up as they were enveloped by its tendrils, covering them entirely. It was the thickening of questions, the multitude of decisions to be made, of possibilities so numerous they were blinding. And yet emerging from there remained only two of note.

This was the moment, fight or flight. Albus was determined to fight. Gellert was braced to run.

"She's dead," Albus said, his voice quavering. He tried to hide all emotion from his voice, he tried not to mourn the girl he had never truly had to lose. He tried to hold the grief he had for the Dumbledore family at arm's length.

"She is," Gellert agreed.

"I have no ties here any more," Albus continued, trying to find the good. It was stored out in this night in abundance. Squinting through the fog Albus found it in a life unrestricted. A life spent by the side of Gellert Grindelwald. Casting a look around Godric's Hollow, he found it as empty as he had returning for the summer before Gellert had arrived. His own house behind him felt hollow. "I can come with you, we could leave."

Suddenly, despite the undeniable gravity which grappled for his heart he couldn't help but feel treacherously uplifted. Laying in front of him were countless threads, each a possibility, each a future. When woven correctly, they made a tapestry of Gellert and Albus, of absolute power.

And of home.

With growing excitement in his voice, Albus continued, "I don't have to stay here!" he exclaimed, "I- _we- _could just leave into the night. I'm not needed here, and you don't belong here. We could go and be powerful, you and I, we could search for the Hallows, be eternal masters of Death," the mist was clearing as choices were made.

Albus caught another glimpse at Gellert's eyes. His guard down, they looked terrifyingly sad. Then, the moment he noticed Albus' scrutiny he adopted that same steely expression. Albus wasn't sure which one scared him more. Both seemed not to bode well.

"No, Albus," he said quietly, but Albus wasn't listening, his own mind was filled with the life they could have, an eternal entanglement of the light and dark. His ears were filled with the sounds of sweet nothings, before his eyes the two grew old, on his skin Gellert's hands held him close, the taste of Gellert's lips danced on his tongue.

"I'm leaving."

The world shattered.

"W-with me?" Albus asked meekly. He knew the answer, but the blunt words had stunned the eloquence out of him. As he picked his way slowly towards Gellert through the fragments of his Earth, splinters of it dug into his ankles and the soles of his feet. His blood was salty with denial as he extended an arm towards Gellert, who was backing out towards the gate.

"No, Albus, alone." Albus continued to stumble towards him, and Gellert found it harder and harder to resist, to uphold the indifference, to not run right into his embrace and forget everything. Albus had softened his cruelty. Here was the first boy to tell him he was beautiful, for the first time Gellert could not summon up the callousness which had once been as natural as breathing.

_The world needs Albus Dumbledore, he can never be mine. _

So, with pieces of himself cracking as Albus' face fell with understanding, Gellert tried to pull himself together. It was so tempting to explain to him, that it was because Albus was good. Because he didn't deserve Albus. But Albus would only disagree and devote himself to Gellert even more absolutely.

"Please, Gellert," Albus whispered, with all knowledge that the words were futile, "please don't leave me."

And for the smallest moment Gellert allowed it all to drop. He showed Albus what he wasn't sure Albus had seen. For some immeasurable period of time Gellert showed Albus how much he loved him, showed him the absolute purity of his love, the only absolutely pure thing he had ever owned. Gellert showed Albus that Gellert had belonged to him as much as Albus had been his. The weight of this was enough to snatch Albus' breath from him in realisation.

And then Gellert turned on his heel and was gone.

* * *

All the strength he had left yanked from him with Gellert's departure, Albus fell to his knees. There was a finality in the air, a vow that he would never hold Gellert Grindelwald again, that he would never kiss him. Fat, anguished tears rolled his cheeks as suddenly he felt a terrible pain in his chest. Lifting a hand to clutch at it he found with despair that Gellert's heart was gone, replaced with his own again, broken and trampled and bleeding and _bleeding. _

Albus was insensible to sight and sound. The night's chill was now a howling wind, piercing his bones and spreading through him like ice. Albus was consumed by a blackness all encompassing. He didn't struggle against it, he welcomed it. Misery and pain felt like friends he had missed, they sat by either side of him and pricked him with small pins and laughed when he flinched and bled. Somewhere in the distance some poor, tormented creature was wailing. Slowly, Albus realised it was him.

A self pitying instinct in Albus hauled him to his feet and turned his back on his house to grasp at the empty air where Gellert had once been, as if perhaps the mere action would bring him back. When his hand closed around empty air he felt the loss all over again, crashing over him like a tsunami. Recklessness and denial overcame him and deciding he must find him again, Albus turned on his heel.

Reeling, he landed in the New Forest where they had first kissed. Vision blurred by the constant tears he staggered aimlessly through the dirt and around looming trees, calling out Gellert's name to the empty night. At the top of his lungs he yelled for him, shouted at him for hiding, scolding him for running.

Cursing him over and over for making Albus fall in love with him.

He yelled until his throat hurt with the effort, at which point he cast his eyes down to the ground in hopelessness. Summer showers had long ago washed away the triangular eye in the ground. He realised miserably that Gellert hadn't even said goodbye.

With this thought the recklessness tempted him again, and with another spin of his heel Albus found himself in Knockturn Alley, amidst the filthy and decrepit of the wizarding world. Once, pristine and cautious Albus had avoided this place with contempt and regarded its people with this sentiment. But this broken Albus, he knew these people like old friends. No longer a stranger to pain and suffering the streaks on their faces and liquor on their breath were familiar to him. Their fractured souls felt like home to him. The only home Gellert's loss would allow.

Trudging towards a ramshackle tavern with the same defeated gait as the rest of the alley's frequents, Albus entered and threw himself into one of the stools at the bar, slumping over and looking around himself with tired eyes. The delinquents and dejected surrounded him. Scum of the earth, his brothers in arms. As he turned back to the bar the barman met his gaze. He wore an eye-patch over one eye and had long, straggly hair, but the one eye he had remaining was kind and soft and blue.

_Gellert's eyes are blue._

"You alright there, lad?" he asked in a gruff voice, putting down the tankard he was drying and hobbling over. "Well aren't you a picture of sorrow? I'll get you a butterbeer, shall I?"

"No," Albus interjected, "Firewhiskey," One eyebrow and part of the eye-patch raised, but the barman was not in the business of checking for ages.

"Firewhiskey," he noted, "She must have been quite a girl." Albus nodded with a small, sad smile. When the Firewhiskey came he downed it in one gratuitous gulp and asked for another. He welcomed the burning to his throat. The sickly sweetness felt like the perfect substitute for sweet kisses and sweet nothings. Slowly he sank further and further into oblivion. Slowly he began the amnesia set it, and with it, bliss.

Eventually, he just bought the rest of the bottle and, thanking the barman and drunkenly thanking the kindred spirits around him, he turned on his heel again, back to Godric's hollow.

* * *

The moment Aberforth notified the Ministry of Ariana's death, the message was sent on to Elphias. He received it like a dull blow, like a cold shiver. His mind did not immediately fly to the deceased- who he had barely known- but to the bereaved. In every pitiable equivalent experience Elphias could draw upon which went some way to being comparable, Albus had stood by his side. Though well in the knowledge that all around them considered Elphias a 'dim-witted side kick', Albus had never treated him as anything but an equal. It had killed him to leave his grieving friend over the summer, even more so to learn that he had offended him when criticising the company he chose. The moment he heard, he thanked the Egyptian alchemists for their hospitality and apparated immediately back to Godric's Hollow.

It was night in England, or, more accurately, the earliest of the morning's hours. The two chimes from St Christine's informed him of this. He hurried towards the Dumbledore residence, noting the uncharacteristic chill in the normally warm night air. It seemed even the night had known what it had lost.

He had hardly finished knocking on the door when it was opened by a wearied looking Aberforth. His face rose momentarily at the prospect of somebody having come and then instantly fell again when he realised it was Elphias. Elphias was used to such a reception.

"Oh, it's you," Aberforth, whilst only being fifteen, looked incredibly aged tonight, his eyes sunken and his voice tired. "You won't find him here."

"Well then where will I find him?" Elphias asked, trying not to sound impatient. He found Aberforth tiresome, but tonight the boy had gone through such horrors as he could never bear to face, and he had nobody to face it with. He tried stepping around him to look into the hallway, but caught a glimpse of a lock of blonde hair tumbling out of the door which lead to the living room and took a step back. The house acquired a sudden air of death.

"I don't know, he's probably off somewhere with his _boyfriend,_" if Elphias felt any shock from the word spat by Aberforth onto the ground where it belonged, he didn't allow it to register on his face. His instinct was to laugh it off as something immature boys said, but there was something about Albus, something hidden in half light and always left untouched, which lead Elphias to question this.

Whatever confusion he had about Albus there was one thing he was certain of, he wanted to leave. The house was making him increasingly uncomfortable, as was its sole dweller, who was looking at him with hollow eyes. Thanking him politely he backed away and watched as the door was swung back again.

He turned to the empty night, unsure of quite where to go. He wondered aimlessly around Godric's Hollow with mixed feelings. The sense of urgency to find his friend battled with the confrontation which came as a result of what Aberforth may or may not have told him. Finally, when it was approaching three in the morning, Elphias turned back with a sigh and headed towards Bathilda's house, where he had hoped he would find lodgings for the night.

It was then, walking past the graveyard of St Christine's, that he heard it. There was something about the conceit of the witching hours and graveyards which already had Elphias on edge, but staying his drumming heart as he thought he heard the clink of glass against stone he stopped, listening for the voice which steadily rose out from the headstones with a slurred and drunken tenor.

_One more night, my bonnie lass,  
One more night my sweet  
For only one more night with you  
Would make my life complete_

Recognising the voice, Elphias jumped the small fence of the graveyard and picked around the gravestones, trying to find its source.

_One more night with you my dear  
Before you say goodbye,  
Only one more night I beg  
Oh don't you make me cry_

A twig snapped under Elphias' clumsy feet but the singing didn't stop. The voice's volume increased as Elphias advanced towards it, finally finding its owner. Albus sat slumped against his mother's grave, stripped of his tie and jacket which lay strewn beside him, his shirt offensively open, his head lolled onto his shoulder against the cold slab of stone which pillowed it. Between his spread legs one hand clutched the neck of a bottle of Firewhiskey. A pathetic pool of honey liquid sloshed at the bottom as Albus brought it to his lips and raised its bottom to the heavens.

Some dribbled in maladroit globules down his cheeks, but whatever feeble remnants found his mouth he gulped greedily. Not yet aware of Elphias' presence, he finished his song.

_Only one more night I beg  
Before I must die_

A tear wrestled free of Albus' dehydrated body, rolled off his chin and dropped into the bottle. Albus' other hand had been clutching a rose which he let fall back to the grave as suddenly the tear was accompanied by a flood of its brothers, staining the already sticky cheeks of Elphias' friend. Unable to bear it any longer he ran to Albus, who looked at him with large, glistening blue eyes before collapsing into a fresh flood of tears.

"Watcha doin 'ere?" he asked, making an open palmed gesture, trying to bat him away as he would a fly. His movements were sluggish, as if he were dragging himself through water. Even his tongue suffered his affliction. As Elphias stooped down to help Albus on, he could smell the liquor on his breath. Grabbing his arm, he hoisted him up so that his shoulder was wedged in his armpit.

"No!" Albus protested, reaching down towards the grave for either the empty bottle or the flower, his intentions were not clear in his inebriated state. Hastily, Elphias collected his clothes, ignoring both along with Albus' complaints. Suddenly angered, Albus struggled against Elphias, wrenching away from Elphias and falling to all fours on the floor. "You don' unnerstand..." he explained, sitting and hugging his knees to his chest. "I-I loved him."

So Aberforth had been telling the truth.

Slowly, he knelt down again, placing a tentative arm on Albus' shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. He was by no means shocked, and knowing that Albus was gay did not taint him in his eyes, but seeing him brokenhearted, this affected him. Albus had not only been Gellert's rock, he was so for every other person who had the privilege of knowing him, even Aberforth- though he'd never admit it- suffered a loss when he cut him out of his life.

But he didn't look like a rock. Albus looked like a pebble, thrown repeatedly against the seabed, scuffed and cracked. Elphias didn't know how to fix him.

"I loved him," Albus said again, weakly, looking up, holding Elphias' eyes, no doubt searching for the disapproval he had always feared. He would find none. Elphias only strengthened his hold on Albus and rubbed his arm consolingly.

"I know you did," he said softly, as if speaking to a child, "I know, but you have to go home now," Albus shook his head violently.

"No, no not home..." something like despair flashed in his eyes and suddenly the moment of cooperation was gone and Albus wasn't looking at him anymore, he was simply reaching for the bottle again. Or perhaps the rose. Neither were within his grasp.

When the moon had clambered slowly down from its pedestal to allow the sun his place again, Albus finally allowed Elphias to help him to Bathilda's house. In the mid-darkness Elphias instructed him to hold on tight, and- despite much protestation- turned on his heel.

The combination of grief, alcohol and side-along apparition was too much for Albus as he turned away from Elphias and retched fiercely into the bushes beside Bathilda's house. Turning away from the moment of indignity, Elphias rang Bathilda's doorbell, hoping she wouldn't mind being woken too much. She answered almost immediately, somewhat shocked to see Elphias at the door, but to Elphias' own surprise she showed no apparent shock at Albus' condition. Instead, she extended and arm to him and ushered him quickly inside, showing him to one of the guest rooms. He ran immediately for the bathroom. Elphias closed the door behind him.

"Gellert left," Bathilda explained as Elphias looked at her quizzically, "not before Albus fell in love with him."

Elphias' eyes widened, "You know?" he asked incredulously.

"I have always known," Bathilda sighed. "I should have done more to stop it, only I was fascinated. I wanted to see what happens when a hurricane meets a cyclone." Through the door came the sound of retching again.

"A disaster," Elphias said in a faraway voice, looking behind him into the middle-distance.

"A very _powerful_ disaster," Bathilda agreed.

* * *

Albus stumbled back towards the bed, wiping vomit from his chin. The liquored haze was lifting, intoxicant glasses, tinted rose, were ripped from him by the cruel hand of sobriety. His sense of invincibility was replaced by a horrible nausea and the numbness was gone. Albus remembered, and once again he felt the agony.

_Gellert's gone._

When you are in pain there is nothing but that pain. There are no profound and poetic thoughts that haunt your mind, there is no romanticism which you find. When in pain one struggles to see any beauty which dwells there, in fact when in pain nobody is looking. When in pain there are only two things. The pain, and the urgent need to not feel it. Albus' pain stemmed from the Gellert he was missing in his heart and spread through his veins as the alcohol wore off. Memories plagued him, Gellert's blue eyes, the way his hair curled at the back of his neck, the scars which ran up and down his body, the taste of his lips.

The way he said _I love you, _as if it were true.

That last look he gave him, in which Albus had been so sure that it was.

Memories attacked him with rapiers, slashing at his skin, opening old wounds, creating new ones. _Wounds, Gellert's scars, _Albus flinched at the tang of blood in his mouth. He longed for more alcohol, or for the memories to just go away. Gripped with a sudden elation which almost blacked out the pain momentarily, Albus remembered that he could.

Drawing his wand out with some effort, he brought it up to his head with a sigh and closed his eyes. The room was still, his wand barely quavered in his hand as he brought it to his temple. Albus relished the last few moments he would have of ever knowing that Gellert's face existed. His injured heart beat the last few laboured beats in his name before he opened his mouth.

"_Obliviate._"

Albus waited for the pain to alleviate, for all memory of Gellert to be gone. He sat up on the bed and waited. And waited. But it never came.

"_Obliviate,_" he tried again, frustrated. Was his wand not working? What was going on, why couldn't he make the spell work? I husky voice in his mind told him it was because he didn't want it to. To drown it out, Albus began to shout the spell over and over again.

"_Obliviate! OBLIVIATE! DAMN YOU GELLERT!" _The door to the room burst open and Albus' wand flew out of his hand and into Elphias'. Albus launched himself at him but stumbled, weakened and nauseous, and fell to the ground. Casting the wand far out of reach Elphias clutched onto Albus, who was struggling against his grip, screaming incoherent threats. Elphias held on to Albus no matter how much he thrashed, gripping the fabric of his shirt in tight fists until finally Albus stopped struggling and collapsed, fatigued and hopeless. Elphias felt tears fall on his shoulder as Albus allowed him to hold him and cried like a wounded animal.

Finally Elphias put Albus in bed and lay with him as Gellert had, arms wrapped tightly around him.

It was of no comfort to Albus. The arms were not Gellert's. There was no replacement for what he had lost.

He dreamed that night but one dream, the one thing he wanted more than anything in his trampled and maimed heart. He dreamed of a life with Gellert. A life of power and beauty and the purest of loves too pure for even the word love.

And of home. Always of home.


	8. I Go On

When Albus awoke, he felt behind him for Gellert's arms. When he didn't find him, the world broke again.

The sickly sweet scent of alcohol mingled in the air with the musk of stale sweat and the tang of vomit. Albus felt dirty, encrusted in dried blood from the night before. He had the sudden compulsion to clean something, to wash something from him. He opened his eyes, deciding to take a shower.

The blinding light of morning seared like a razor through his eyes and right to his brain. Groaning, Albus fell back into bed and clutched his head. He felt it again, the pain. It had been reluctant to make itself known in the haze of morning, but now it had hit him with full force and left him gasping for air. Gathering the strength, with his eyes shut, Albus stood from the bed and felt his way to the bathroom, where he shut the door and was in total darkness again.

Albus found himself angry. How inconsiderate it seemed of the sun to rise. How cruel for the Earth to continue to spin on her axis. How unjust of the second hand to continue to pass over the face when Albus was in such a state. It was wicked of life to go on with no regard to what had transpired over the last few hours, with no concern over the state of Albus' heart. He hated time, hated how it persisted, how it drove headlong at alarming speeds, pulling all along with it despite their protestation. For some it came to clumsy stops, but it allowed nobody enough of a pause to say goodbye, just drew them away to some land where those they had lost were no longer in view.

A land they would never reach, for time never stops. Not even for Albus, poor, destroyed Albus. Time would not wait to mend him. It would not even slow so that he could gather up the pieces left behind.

Albus lit a small light in the bathroom, one which was just about bearable, so that he could make his way to the shower. Stripping of the ragged clothing of last night he turned it on and stood under it for a while, waiting for the water to take effect.

But he still ached, no matted how much he scrubbed the wounds and bruises could not simply be erased. With each bead of water that smashed against his skin he only felt a woeful familiarity. The water only demonstrated how he felt, like a drop of water, plunging to the ground, splintering as it fell. And most poignant was that nobody cared for this one drop, this one heart, amongst the many others broken. It was of no consequence to the world whether or not Albus was hurt. The world had a great many other people to worry about. Just as Albus felt no sympathy towards no one drop or another.

Reaching for the handle, Albus intended to turn off the water when another thought hit him. A way to drown out the pain. Slowly, deliberately, Albus turned the temperature down, further and further until the handle would turn no longer and there was no longer water pounding at his back but liquid ice.

Albus stood there until his entire body flushed red, until his teeth began to chatter and every hair rose. Albus stood through the convulsions and spasms of his body, his corpse, imploring him to leave the cold but he would not. The cold brought a new pain, a welcome pain. A physical pain so immense it engulfed everything else he could feel. Weakened, Albus' knees betrayed him and he fell against the cold tiles of the shower. More pain. He welcomed it like an old friend, curling himself up with his back and side pressed against the stone as water battered him with new enthusiasm.

Albus wasn't sure when he began to cry, but he awoke out of his state of pained mourning to feel a warm dampness on his cheek, indeed made strikingly more so by the lack of warmth everywhere else. He wasn't sure when he had begun to wail but his throat was sore and he could still hear the wounded cries from some distance away. Albus wasn't sure when this had attracted Elphias' attention, but now the door burst open and Elphias was gazing down upon his friend in horror. Reduced to a naked whelp, crying and shivering on the floor.

Hastily Elphias shut off the water and Albus let out another loud, incoherent cry in protest. Already he could feel the old pain emerging. Ignoring him, Elphias gathered his soaked friend in his arm and helped him up. Albus struggled against him and slipped, fell from Elphias' grip. Something cracked as he hit the floor and a pain shot through his leg. The pain retreated again in the presence of the fracture in Albus' thigh. He rolled his eyes back in relief.

This time Albus could not deny the arms that lifted him off the ground and deposited him on the bed in the half-light of whatever could slip through the crack of the now drawn curtain. He could only wait as Elphias dried him and clothed him. Despite Albus' constant objection in the form of a childlike scream, Elphias set about fixing Albus' leg.

Too soon the pain was gone, but by that time Albus had blacked out.

When he stirred again his mind was clearer, the pain in his chest was still there, and whilst with every meek throb of his heart it pulsed through him like a flaming arrow, he found it subtly more bearable.

The first thing Albus noticed was that he was wearing an unfamiliar pair of flannel pyjamas. The second was Elphias, who was sat next to him in a rickety chair, sipping on tea from a chipped cup. He was looking at Albus with sad, pitying eyes. Albus recognised his expression, it was the same he had worn upon first meeting the boy with dragon pox who nobody had wanted as a friend. What had the world come to if Elphias was now the one pitying Albus?

"My friend," Albus croaked, shuffling so that he sat upright in the bed, "have you been here this entire time?"

"Three days, Albus," he confirmed. _Three days. _Albus could barely remember the events of the past hours, but certainly he had not been unconscious for three days?

"Ariana's funeral is tomorrow. Can you go?" he asked. There was a soft displeasure in Elphias' voice, an irritation at Albus which bordered on anger, but it was overpowered by his pity. Albus nodded.

"Yes, yes I am able,"

"Good." The room fell back into silence. Elphias avoided Albus' eye as he contemplated the curtains. Albus could find no words to say. Thank you did not seem like enough for what Albus had put him through.

"Elphias?" he asked, finally calling his attention. Reluctantly Elphias looked back at Albus, the irritation not gone, "I'm sorry." Elphias' features eased. The corners of his mouth turned up in a sad smile and he shook his head ever so slightly.

"I warned you, Albus," he reminded him. It sounded a lot like an _I-told-you-so, _but indeed he had so Albus could feel no sense of reproach. He only sighed.

"I know you did, Elphias," he agreed, "but you do not understand."

"Oh?" The word was sharp and loud, Elphias had allowed a crack in his placid façade. He felt an indignation towards Albus, that his destruction could have been avoided if only he had listened. But of course, no, it was _Elphias _who didn't understand, _Elphias _who never understood. The atmosphere tensed, awaiting an explosion. Sharply aware of it, Albus tried again.

"Elphias, there are a great many subjects you _do_ understand," Albus assured him, trying to ease his annoyance, "but you have not felt this love." Elphias cocked an eyebrow, unconvinced. Albus sighed, "Elphias," he tried again, "what I feel for Gellert, it defies reason, it will not be warned against. It will not cease."

Albus' breath hitched as he felt tears prick his eyes again, not the self-pitying tears of three days ago, but new tears. Tears of nostalgia, tears of what he had lost. These tears he cried for Gellert, and not for what Gellert had made of him.

"This love," he continued, struggling for the words, "it evades explanation. It cannot be quantified or measured and it still grips me," he paused again as more tears dripped down his nose, "and so that was why it was so laudable of you to warn me, warn me against it. My loving Gellert was chosen for me, I had no control."

"Chosen?" Elphias scoffed, "by who?" Albus shook his head and threw it back against his headboard.

"Fate, god, natural selection, take your pick," he looked up to the ceiling in wonderment, and Elphias suspected that he did not see just the ceiling. "All I know was that it was something undeniable.

"And cruel."

"You still love him then?" Elphias asked. The question was absurd, but Albus answered anyway.

"Yes, Elphias," he confirmed, rolling his head to one side so he could look his friend in the eye. "I think I will always love him."

After some time and much weeping, Albus finally picked up the needle and thread. With slow and clumsy hands he stitched the wounds on his heart closed, allowed them to heal in ragged scars. These he never showed, and his abomination of a heart he could never place in anybody else's chest. It remained exclusively Gellert's, even as the boy he loved turned into a cruel and hardened man, even as by Albus' wand he fell. Even then Albus could not stop his usually steady wand hand from quaking, and from being compelled again to shun the light, to nurse Gellert's scars again, to be his.

But Gellert taught him one thing. Gellert taught him the ability of his heart, Gellert had taught him that he could love unconditionally and that Albus had a great wealth of love. This love in his lifetime Albus aimed to spend, to dole out to each and every person he crossed paths with.

And at one point or another in his life, Albus possessed each of the Deathly Hallows. And at one point or another, he lost them again.

But to Albus it didn't matter. Because what was eternal life without Gellert?

Over time it became easier to pretend that he didn't still love him, to pretend that every dull throb of his heart wasn't another agonising reminder that he could never be with the man he loved. But time was fickle, for she never allowed him to regret. Albus could hate, loathe at some points what he had done. He could detest his brother, he could despise that Gellert could have killed Ariana, but nothing could make him regret the love he had felt as a boy, the passion, the truth in the exchange of hearts.

The truth in that last look from Gellert, the one which still haunted his dreams. The truth that rocked worlds, changed tides, rearranged stars. The love to powerful for the word love.

Somewhere, in the graveyard outside St Christine's, mourners walked past the grave of Kendra Dumbledore, loving mother and much missed friend. Disdainfully, holding their ornate wreaths and garlands, they pitied the woman not loved enough in life that she would receive more than a meagre rose in death. A mere stalk now, one petal clinging lifelessly on whilst the rest littered the grey stone below.

But they did not understand. The flower was not meant to last, quite as nothing else corporeal ever can. It was the memory of that rose, full and bright and passionate, that was the tribute. With a slight gust of wind, the final petal released with a a sigh and fluttered down to join her sisters.

With her, Albus Dumbledore breathed his final breath.

The memory of that rose is what sustains us. What was once full and bright and passionate and we all aim for again. And whilst many of us will never find it, some of us may never have the flower to begin with. Albus was the lucky one, for whatever brief amount of time he had love. A love that inspired the songs of angels, that summoned tears from the heavens, that for whatever brief amount of time stilled the raging seas.

And all the time Albus kept that _memory _of the rose close to his heart, and wistfully dreamed of Gellert.

Somewhere in Kings Cross, the two board a train.

And go on.

* * *

_**A/N: I realise my author's notes have been non-existent, but that is because I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the story. There is nothing left to flow. The story is finished, just as all stories must. But this one, it is much closer to my heart than the others, and so I thank all you readers, the few of you, for joining me until the very end. This is by far the work I am most proud of, and to be able to share it with you and to have the feedback I have had has made it even more enjoyable for me to write. **_

_**To Layla, my wonderful Beta, I thank you and apologise for not sending you this final chapter, but I wanted you to read it as it was intended. The final product of my toils.**_

**_To Hester, thank you for reading this as well, and for always being encouraging of my fanfiction. You genuinely inspire me to continue writing whenever the writer's block threatens._**

**_And to Albus and to Gellert, thank you for allowing me to lead you on this journey, and here I lay you to rest. In some universe you love, in this you are loved._**


End file.
